Yiddish literature, the body of written works produced in the Yiddish language of Ashkenazic Jewry (central and eastern European Jews and their descendants).

Yiddish literature culminated in the period from 1864 to 1939, inspired by modernization and then severely diminished by the Holocaust. It arose in Europe out of a tradition that gave precedence to Hebrew prayers, commentaries, and scripture. As the vernacular expression of Ashkenazic Jews, Yiddish literature was often intended for ordinary readers rather than for the highly educated. Because few women learned Hebrew, their literacy was in Yiddish, and they became the primary audience for some forms of Yiddish literature.

The history of Yiddish literature falls into three general periods: Old Yiddish literature, Haskala and Hasidism, and Modern Yiddish literature. Old Yiddish literature (c. 1300–1780) emerged in the areas that are now Germany and Italy. After it moved eastward with Jewish migration to eastern Europe, publishing centres arose in Prague and Kraków. Haskala (the Jewish Enlightenment, c. 1755–1880) spread eastward from Berlin, one of its early centres, and Hasidism was a religious movement that originated about 1740 in an area of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth that is now Ukraine. Haskala writers often opposed the use of Yiddish—which they viewed as a defective “jargon”—and favoured German, but by 1815 Hasidic publications reaffirmed the importance of popular storytelling in Yiddish. Modern Yiddish literature (1864 to the present) embraced Yiddish as the vehicle for a European literature like any other. Mass emigration to North America (especially after the political turmoil and pogroms of 1881) spread Yiddish poetry, drama, and fiction to the New World; emigration to Palestine (and later Israel) continued the literary tradition there.

Yiddish literature and culture have been in decline since the Nazi genocide (Yiddish khurbn) destroyed its major centres in Continental Europe. Oppression also cut short the Yiddish tradition in the Soviet Union, while assimilation has curtailed the role of Yiddish in the United States and Canada. Since the 1980s, however, Yiddish literature has received new attention in North America, Europe, and Israel, and there have been many efforts to revive Yiddish culture through klezmer music, translations, and university studies. Centres of secular Yiddish culture exist in New York, Montreal, Paris, Tel Aviv, and elsewhere, but Hasidic Jews are the main group that continues to use Yiddish as an everyday language. Yiddish literature has found indirect expression in American and British fiction written in English.

Old Yiddish literature

By the 12th century, Jewish life was highly developed along the Rhine River in the German towns of Worms, Speyer, and Mainz. Some linguists have suggested that Yiddish originated in the Rhineland; others speculate that it began in Jewish communities along the Danube River, such as Regensburg, in eastern Bavaria. Yiddish of the medieval period was similar to contemporary Middle High German, but it was distinctive because it was written in Hebrew characters, incorporated Hebrew loanwords, and reconfigured some aspects of the Germanic component. As a result of the eastward migration of Jewish communities, by the 18th century Slavic loanwords also had become an important element of spoken Yiddish.

The first written evidence of Yiddish literature is a brief rhyme inscribed in the manuscript of a Hebrew prayer book—from the city of Worms—that was completed in 1272–73. A dozen Yiddish words appear inside the empty spaces of five large Hebrew characters. This example placed Yiddish in a subordinate role, serving the Hebrew text, and since then Yiddish literature often has been considered secondary to Hebrew literature. A Yiddish manuscript written in 1382 and discovered in the Cairo Genizah contains verses that retell biblical stories, with variants based on rabbinic commentaries. Other early instances of written Yiddish occur as glosses to Hebrew words in study texts. More significant are full translations of biblical books and Hebrew prayers into Yiddish; for instance, a translation of the Psalms dates from 1490, and the publication of a Yiddish rendering of the Hebrew prayer “Adir Hu” (“Mighty Is He”) has been dated to 1526. A Yiddish dictionary and concordance to the Hebrew Bible, attributed to the scholar Rabbi Anshel, was published in Kraków in 1534.

The most influential Yiddish rendering of the Bible was Tsene-rene (“Go Out and See”; Eng. trans. Tsenerene) by Jacob ben Isaac Ashkenazi. The text is a loose paraphrase of the biblical passages that are read in the synagogue: the Five Books of Moses, the supplementary readings (haftarot), and the five scrolls (megillot). First published about 1600, Tsenerene incorporated a wide selection of commentaries and narrative expansions based on rabbinic sources. Reprinted more than 200 times, this book was widely read by women and by men who did not possess sufficient Hebrew to read the original passages and midrashic works.

Tekhines, Yiddish prayers mainly for women, were another important form of religious literature. In contrast to Hebrew liturgy, the Yiddish tekhines tend to be more concrete, intimate entreaties addressed to God. Many of these prayer collections were written by men, but two notable collections are ascribed to Sara Bas-Toyvim, who lived in Ukraine at the beginning of the 18th century. Another distinguished author of a tekhine was Sarah Rebekah Rachel Leah Horowitz, who lived during the 18th century in an area of Poland that is now in Ukraine.

Some scholars, such as Max Weinreich and Shmuel Niger, have speculated that secular Yiddish literature began with oral performances by itinerant minstrels. Printed evidence for this view is scanty, but Menachem Oldendorf, who was born in 1450, did publish a collection of Hebrew and Yiddish songs. It refers to popular German melodies and reflects a form of entertainment that was removed from traditional Jewish life. Yiddish song performances may have inspired the later development of the badkhen (wedding jester).

Popular German folk literature was translated into Yiddish, usually excluding the Christian references and any anti-Semitic remarks. Legends about Dietrich von Bern and Hildebrand, for example, appeared in Yiddish. The Arthurian romances were well known, and, in spite of rabbinic opposition, Yiddish versions of these stories may have been performed over the course of several evenings. Traces of the cultural milieu of the performances are embedded in printed texts, as when the bard pauses and states, “Now we must remain stuck at this point, / until you give me good wine to drink.”

One of the most interesting early Yiddish adaptations is the Shmuel-bukh (1544; “Samuel Book”), which retells the biblical stories of Saul and David. While the content derives from the biblical books of Samuel and other Hebrew sources, the form was clearly influenced by German models. Using the “Hildebrand stanza” similar to that of the Nibelungenlied, each line contains six stresses, divided by a caesura; the four-line stanzas follow the aabbrhyme scheme. Like contemporary German fables, this book was popular for its descriptions of heroic deeds and battles; it is a clear indication that Jewish cultural production was not isolated from its surroundings. Although the earliest extant printed edition dates to 1544, the Shmuel-bukh may have been performed orally as early as the 14th century. David is portrayed as a powerful knight who displays great qualities and undergoes erotic temptations. Like some medieval mystery plays, the Shmuel-bukh contains remarkable dialogue between God and men. David hopes to emulate Abraham’s piety, but God tells him, “My beloved Abraham—with him you cannot compare.” According to the Shmuel-bukh, David’s wish to be tested, as Abraham was, leads to his undoing by Bathsheba’s beauty. As in the book of Job and some midrashic retellings of the binding of Isaac, Satan plays a role in the test.

The towering figure in Old Yiddish literature was Elijah Bokher Levita, who immigrated to Italy along with other German Jews but continued speaking and writing Yiddish. He was a noted Hebrew grammarian and tutor to Italian prelates. His most important Yiddish work was the Bove-bukh (written in 1507 and printed in 1541; “The Book of Bove”), based on an Italian version of the Anglo-Norman Buève de Hantone. The story revolves around a beautiful queen, Brandonia, who betrays the king and brings about his demise. The Bove-bukh is written in ottava rima, using the stanza form with an abababcc rhyme scheme. In reducing the length of his poem to 650 stanzas from 1,400 stanzas in the Italian original, Bokher Levita omitted some erotic scenes and added Judaic qualities to his characters. Pariz un Viene (printed in 1594; “Paris and Vienna”), a tale about a poor knight (Paris) who wishes to marry a princess (Vienna) and ultimately succeeds, may have been his second major literary work. Some scholars have questioned his authorship. They speculate that it was translated into Yiddish from another European language, because its complexity is atypical of Old Yiddish literature.

The Mayse-bukh (“Book of Stories”), a collection of short tales based on Hebrew and other sources, was first published in 1602. This work epitomizes a strand of edifying, ethical literature that became important in early Yiddish writing. Drawing from midrashic traditions, folktales, and legends, it developed an effective prose style distinct from the prior poetic narratives. The Mayse-bukh influenced the later development of story collections; moreover, it anticipated the hagiographic genre of some Hasidic works.

Early Yiddish literature also includes nonreligious lyrics, newspapers such as the Amsterdam Kuranton (1686–87; “Chime”), and historical poems. Many of these poems were verse narratives that responded to traumatic events such as pogroms, military actions, or fires. The rise of the false messiah Shabbetai Tzevi, which was a particularly troubling phenomenon, is the subject of the Meshiekh-lid (1666; “Messiah Poem”).

Glikl of Hameln (Germany) wrote a remarkable memoir, starting in 1691. She began writing after her husband died, leaving her with 12 children. The memoir describes her life and the cultural milieu in Hameln, Hamburg, and Metz; Glikl learned enough Hebrew to incorporate various Hebrew expressions into her language. The memoir manuscript was passed on from generation to generation until it was finally published in 1896. Because of its obscurity, the text did not influence the history of Yiddish letters, but it is a unique panorama of its time and place.

Haskala and Hasidism

During the 18th century, the Enlightenment exerted a profound influence on Jewish life in western Europe by encouraging the Jews to modernize and assimilate. In Berlin the Haskala (Jewish Enlightenment), led by the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn, fought for the modernization of Jewish customs. While Mendelssohn’s disciples emphasized the importance of Western learning, they also championed the literary use of Hebrew. They founded the Hebrew journal Ha-meʾasef (1784–1811; “The Literary Collection”) and—assisted by the Edict of Toleration (1782) under Joseph II—they rapidly spread the Haskala to Galicia (then part of Austria).

Members of the Berlin Haskala, following Mendelssohn, scorned Yiddish as inferior to ancient Hebrew or modern German. Two satiric plays from this period mark the end of Western Yiddish as a literary language. Writing in German but using Hebrew characters, Isaac Euchel wrote Reb Henekh oder vos tut men damit (early 1790s; “Reb Henekh; or, What Is to Be Done?”), in which the foolish characters speak Yiddish (or pompous pseudo-German). Aaron Wolfssohn, from the same circle of Berlin rationalists, wrote Laykhtzin un fremelay (1796; “Frivolity and Piety”), which showed the influences of Euchel’s play and Molière’s Tartuffe. These short plays were not staged, however, and they did not influence the subsequent development of Yiddish drama. Instead, they typify what has been called a “suicidal principle” of Yiddish: the language was used by Enlightenment authors as a means to educate people. They believed that when it had served that purpose, it should be abandoned.

Yiddish books played a more significant role in the dissemination of Hasidism, a spiritualist movement that began in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (now Ukraine). Israel Baʿal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, became the subject of myriad legends. These stories were orally transmitted in Yiddish; they were compiled and published in Hebrew in 1815. Soon after, the first of many compilations written in or translated into Yiddish appeared. Vivid description and graphic language make Shivḥei ha-Besht (1815; In Praise of the Baʿal Shem Tov) an important link in the chain of Judaic literature. The stories recount the life of Israel Baʿal Shem Tov, paying special attention to how he was “revealed” as a spiritual leader and wonder-worker. Many episodes involve supernatural events, including the exorcism of demons. Subsequently, innumerable other Hasidic leaders became the subjects of analogous hagiographic narratives.

Rabbi Naḥman ben Simḥah of Bratslav, great-grandson of the Baʿal Shem Tov, told allegorical Yiddish tales to his disciples. These Sippurey mayses (“Tales”) were collected by his scribe, Nathan Sternharz, and published in a bilingual Hebrew-Yiddish edition in 1815. The Hebrew lends an aura of religious authority to these tales, while the Yiddish is closer to the original language in which Naḥman narrated them in 1806–10. On the surface, they appear to be simple folktales and may be enjoyed as such. On another level, they provide guidance and inspiration to spiritual seekers. To the initiated, moreover, they conceal secrets of Jewish mysticism.

The 1815 edition ascribes 13 canonical tales of varying length and complexity to Rabbi Naḥman. In “The Loss of the Princess,” for example, a man strives to liberate the lost princess by means of spiritual discipline. According to Naḥman, he told this story while traveling, and “whoever heard it had thoughts of repentance.” In cabalistic terms, this quest narrative may represent efforts to free the Shekhinah (immanent Divine Presence) from exile; this exilic condition not only has cosmological underpinnings but also parallels the Jewish Diaspora following the Roman destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. In “The Humble King,” a wise man is sent to fetch a portrait of a hidden king. On one level, the story refers to a paradoxical search for God, whose face cannot be seen. “The Sophisticate and the Simple Man” well expresses the populistideology behind the Hasidic movement: while the sophisticate has too much learning for his own good, the simple man enjoys his modest life. The skepticism of the sophisticate brings only misfortune. “The Master of Prayer” tells of a leader who strives to convince the world that prayer is the only true purpose of life. The intricate narrative presents both a mystical picture of redemption and a quasi-autobiographical account of Naḥman’s life as a Hasidic leader.

These tales bring together popular folktales and religious teachings of the Hasidic movement. Apparently frustrated by the difficulty of conveying abstract teachings to his disciples, Naḥman turned to narratives with allegorical meanings. By publishing the stories in a bilingual Hebrew-Yiddish edition, Sternharz accorded Yiddish new stature as a language of Hasidic literature. Hence the writer I.L. (Isaac Leib) Peretz commented in 1908 that the roots of modern Yiddish literature lay in Naḥman’s tales. Dozens of Naḥman’s other stories, anecdotes, and even dreams were recorded by disciples of the rebbe. The dream narratives especially, by giving expression to his anxieties, reveal a more personal side of the leader. Starting with Peretz in Yiddish and Martin Buber in German, Hasidic stories have inspired numerous retellings.

As the Enlightenment moved eastward from Berlin, its proponents became adversaries of Hasidic practices. Authors such as Yisroel Aksenfeld, Shloyme Ettinger, Isaac Meir Dik, and I.J. Linetsky attacked what they saw as the antiquated and superstitious ways of the Jewish world.

Aksenfeld, born in Nemirov (Ukraine), was early on a Hasid in the Bratslav circle; he was a disciple of Rabbi Naḥman and a friend of Sternharz. Later Aksenfeld opposed Hasidism, which he thought obstructed the spread of Enlightenment and progress. He knew Russian, Polish, and German and studied law in Odessa. His novelDos shterntikhl (1861; “The Head-Covering”) is an incisive satire. Aksenfeld was perhaps the first novelist in Yiddish; because of Hasidic opposition he was unable to publish his works, and most have been lost.

Shloyme Ettinger was born to a rabbinic family in Warsaw, and in addition to receiving a traditional Jewish education he read secular works. He studied medicine in Lemberg (now Lviv) and was influenced by the Berlin Enlightenment. A fine Yiddish stylist, influenced by the German playwright Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, he was able to differentiate his characters by their particular language. Like Elijah Bokher Levita and other Old Yiddish authors, Ettinger clearly followed European models and led Yiddish literature in that direction.

Ettinger wrote many important plays, including the comedy Serkele (published 1861). A full-fledged work with a five-act structure, this is one of the most accomplished dramas of the Haskala period. The scholar Dan Miron has speculated that the author of Serkele must have read Molière (in German translation). Ettinger’s criticisms focus less on traditional religious beliefs than on social foibles; the work strives to show that, ultimately, injustice is punished and good prevails. Distorted speech—by characters who affect good breeding in bad German—reflects a deformed reality. For the history of Yiddish drama it is significant that Abraham Goldfaden, subsequently an important producer of early Yiddish theatre, played the lead role in a Serkele performance of 1862.

Isaac Meir Dik was born in Vilna (now Vilnius) and lived most of his life in this centre of rabbinic learning. Among the first champions of the Enlightenment in Lithuania, he laid the foundations for secular Yiddish literature. From the 1850s to the 1880s he was one of the leading Yiddish authors; his hundreds of stories, which comprised some of the earliest secular Yiddish books, sold up to 100,000 copies. Dik thus played a role in creating a wide readership for Yiddish fiction. His goals were didactic: “to educate the masses, improve their customs, familiarize them with the world, cleanse their religious ideas of superstitions and follies, and make them aware of their mistakes” (according to the Yiddish literary historian, Zalman Reyzn [1887–1941]). Like Rabbi Naḥman, but with diametrically opposed goals in respect to religious practice, Dik realized the importance of using stories to reach Yiddish readers. He stated openly that his critical portraits were written only for the sake of his readers’ happiness and well-being. His works discuss issues surrounding education, social and economic reform, and the place of women in Jewish culture. Late in life, as conditions in Russia became harsher, he encouraged immigration to the United States.

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Fiddler on the Roof, one of the greatest of American musical comedies, opened in New York City in September 1964 and played continuously until July 1972. The movie version appeared in 1971. Most of those who have seen it are probably unaware that the plot is derived from the works of Sholem Aleichem, one of the world’s master storytellers. Aleichem, the pen name of Sholem Yakov Rabinowitz, is one of the best-known writers of Yiddish literature (see Sholem Aleichem).